Obscured by Clouds. The rough and ready blog of a cloud benighted biologist and amateur astronomer. Astroblog will cover my interests in astronomy, biology and Life, the Universe and Everything.

Sunday, November 03, 2013

The International Space Station, Venus and the Moon, 3-8 November 2013

The ISS passes near Venus, Sagittarius, as seen from Adelaide on the evening of Tuesday November 5
at 21:33 ACDST. Simulated in Stellarium (the ISS will actually be a
bright dot), click to embiggen.

The ISS passes beside Venus and the crescent Moon, as seen from Adelaide on the evening of Thursday November 7 at 21:34 ADCST. Simulated in Stellarium (the ISS will actually be a bright
dot), click to embiggen.

All sky chart showing times from Heavens Above for Tuesday November 5 for Adelaide.Click to embiggen

All sky chart showing times from Heavens Above for Thursday November 7 for Adelaide. Click to embiggen

This week sees another series of bright evening passes
of the International Space Station. For many places in Australia this
series is capped midweek to end week by a series of spectacular passes as the ISS comes close to Venus while Venus itself is close to the Moon.

When and what you will see is VERY location dependent (eg on the 5th in Sydney the ISS crosses the Zenith, far from Venus, but on the 7th it is closer to Venus than from Adelaide), so you need to use either Heavens Above or CalSky
to get site specific predictions for your location. Even the difference
between the city centre and the suburbs can mean the difference between
seeing the ISS go close to Venus or far from it.

Start looking several minutes before the pass is going to start to get
yourself oriented and your eyes dark adapted. Be patient, on the night
there may be slight differences in the time of the ISS appearing due to
orbit changes not picked up by the predictions. The ISS will be moving
reasonably fast when it passes byVenus, so be alert.

If you are trying to take pictures, make sure you have a tripod and have
the camera in night mode (or a mode were you can take exposures of
around 5 minutes), if you can set the camera to take multiple exposures
unattended that would be best.